Grape Harvest 2014

I think that a good way to start this blog is reviewing what happened in the last harvest.

Because of the good health of the fruit, in the end of August all the winemakers of the area were expecting a bumper harvest in terms of quantity and quality, but rains appeared in early September and the thing began to change, the temperature did not accompain and maturation was slowing down. Entered in the second half of the month, we began to take the first alarm by the appearance of some fungal diseases like powdery mildew (also commonly known as “ashes”) and some outbreaks of botrytis (rot) in white varieties.

Right now, in retrospect as we say, the decision of many of the professionals have been quite different, but the decision of the start of the harvest was due to take at that time and was not easy, therefore it lacked maturity industrial and phenolic, but the sanitary conditions were changing a lot, more than it seemed at first glance while touring the vineyards collecting samples to continue our track maturation. In a few days the abrupt especially for viura (majority white variety in our area) instead helped me make the decision easy at the time, we had to start harvesting.

Some thought that the decision was accelerated, but as we all want to hit and the decision was mine, the preference at that time was to sacrifice some maturity for a better health condition of the fruit. Thus we began September 24 with the premiere vintage house.

The harvest was selective and was conducted while rapidly, October 7 we had a warehouse full and we began to descubar the first wines. They appeared again rain and luckily we had little to collect, as the health condition worsened greatly. We can say we had three phases of distinct vintage, have a very good quality until October 7, slightly lower until 14 October and a fairly low quality until the 17th of the month, day we gave by finalized our vintage .

With all this and the resulting wines, many of them of great quality, we can say that the decision was more than correct, also say that the work in storage was more demanding than other years, but what can we do? “We are in VENDIMIAS” the rest of the year and the rise of new wines depends heavily on this time.

Some of the new wines are already on the market and sincerely believe that the effort was worth it, and I shall count when you have no chance to taste them.

See you soon !! Greetings.